1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telephone systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems for processing telephone voice messages.
2. Background
With recent innovations in telecommunications, many different affordable services and technologies are currently available to home and business telephone users, including voicemail services. In addition to the availability of conventional stand alone telephone answering devices (TAD) or integrated telephone answering devices (ITAD) that are connected locally to a landline telephone for storing phone messages, voicemail services are available from telephony service providers associated with plain old telephone system (POTS) technology or with alternatives such as cell phone and internet telephony.
Internet telephony, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), is a rapidly emerging technology that allows a user to conduct a telephone conversation where voice is transmitted over the internet from and to the user by a digital device such as a computer or internet telephone. As illustrated in FIG. 1, a VoIP user can place a phone call using a computer 102 equipped with a microphone and speakers (not shown) to transmit and receive a conversation with a called party. The caller's voice is received in the microphone and digitized for transmission as data packets over a data network such as the internet 104, and received by the called party, who may either employ a traditional telephony device 106 or use a device supporting VoIP, such as computer 108. Alternatively, the same functions can be incorporated into an “IP” telephone 110 that resembles a traditional handset, and is provided with an analog telephone adapter (ATA) 112 to send and receive digital data carried over the internet. VoIP ATAs can be included within an IP telephone device or external to a telephone. VoIP provides potential advantages over traditional POTS telephone service in that voice information is carried as packets, and can be transmitted over communication networks more efficiently, allowing VoIP providers to reduce call charges for a VoIP user.
In spite of advantages of emerging telephone technologies, for many telephone users, it may be desirable to maintain a traditional POTS line as well as a line employing an emerging technology device such as a VoIP line. For example, a user having a traditional POTS telephone line can receive telephone messages locally using an ITAD connected to her telephone, and check messages with only one touch of a keypad on the ITAD. Thus, the user can potentially save time when checking messages at home, without having to access a remote voicemail server typically employed for storing voicemail. Alternatively, a user may wish to maintain a traditional POTS phone line with local ITAD message recording for personal use together with a separate business phone line having a separate voicemail service. Thus, in many cases, it may be desirable for a user to have separate phones connected over separate lines to phone service providers, for example one POTS line and one VoIP line. In the latter case, a dual line phone that contains both a POTS line and a VoIP line connected to a voicemail provider would serve the same purpose as two phones with separate lines.
In a dual line phone, both a traditional analog phone line (which could be connected to a POTS service provider) and a digital VoIP line connection can be incorporated in a single device, so that a user can access the VoIP line or analog line using the same device. In the latter example, a user could maintain the VoIP line with voicemail services for business purposes and the analog line with a local TAD or ITAD for personal calls.
A problem for a user managing multiple types of phone lines, such as having a POTS/ITAD together with a VoIP service or POTS/voicemail service, is the lack of ability to coordinate services between the different phone lines. Although a user might use different lines for different purposes, often there will be an overlap in uses and callers in the different lines. Thus, a user may often receive “business calls” or phone messages on her personal line, or personal communications on her business line. As an example, because the type of phone message service provided may vary between lines as described above, a user might encounter difficulty managing phone messages between different lines. As mentioned, VoIP service providers typically supply voicemail services that operate similar to conventional voicemail services in that messages are stored remotely and accessed by a user connecting to the service over a telephone lines and/or data network line. More specifically, voicemail messages associated with VoIP calls received at the user's phone are stored in a remote database (“mailbox”) (often also referred to as voicemail) of the VoIP service provider, and are retrieved by a user connecting to the database, typically by dialing a series of DTMF tones and entering codes. On the other hand, calls received on the user's POTS line may be stored in a separate “mailbox” in the local TAD device. For a phone user wishing to review messages received on such different lines, the process can be cumbersome. In the first place, a user might not be sure of where messages from a particular party are located with respect to two mailboxes, a VoIP and a POTS mailbox. Also, a chronological sequence of messages distributed between the mailboxes may be lost when a user plays back a series of messages, first in one mailbox, then in the other. Additionally, a user wishing to retrieve a particular message of interest for playback may not remember which mailbox the message resides in. Finally, a user may miss important messages because only one mailbox is reviewed. In light of the foregoing, there is a need to improve the integration of multiple types of phone services for a user maintaining more than one phone line.